We have a choice. We can continue along the path of national sovereignty and preparation for war, and face the almost certain destruction of civilization. Or we can take the path of reason and establish a world government, and build a lasting peace.
Just two years earlier, the United States had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 200,000 people and ushering humanity into a new era of existential vulnerability. Einstein, though never directly involved in the Manhattan Project, had triggered this chain of events with a 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany might develop such a weapon first. Now, gazing upon the smoking ruins of Japanese cities and the rising specter of Cold War confrontation, the great humanist felt an urgent responsibility to warn the world about the path it was traveling. albert einstein the menace of mass destruction full speech
In his address, Einstein warned that the successful development of such a weapon could lead to the "radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere" and the "annihilation of any life on earth". He described the arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as having assumed a "hysterical character," where both sides perfected means of mass destruction with "feverish haste" behind walls of secrecy. Key Themes of the Address We have a choice
Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man’s discovery of fire. This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. Just two years earlier, the United States had
Einstein, Albert. "The Menace of Mass Destruction." Speech delivered before the Second Annual Dinner of the Foreign Press Association, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, November 11, 1947.
The final line of Einstein’s original address is often omitted from textbooks. He said: "The answer is not in the laboratory. The answer is in the human heart."
We see a world in which the advances of science have outstripped the advances in man’s moral and political organization. The spectacular advances of technology have brought into being a new kind of war—a war of annihilation. The century that has witnessed the invention of the airplane, the radio, the release of atomic energy, has also witnessed two world wars. It has seen the growth of a new kind of slavery—the slavery of the concentration camp—and the invention of weapons of destruction so terrible that the whole future of civilization is threatened.